| |
| HARK, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe | |
| We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood | |
| Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood, | |
| Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave, | |
| That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown | 5 |
| Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between | |
| Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and waterblowballs, down. | |
| We are there, when we hear a shout | |
| That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover | |
| Makes dither, makes hover | 10 |
| And the riot of a rout | |
| Of, it must be, boys from the town | |
| Bathing: it is summer’s sovereign good. | |
| |
| By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise | |
| He drops towards the river: unseen | 15 |
| Sees the bevy of them, how the boys | |
| With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies huddling out, | |
| Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by turn and turn about. | |
| |
| This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast | |
| Into such a sudden zest | 20 |
| Of summertime joys | |
| That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best | |
| There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest; | |
| Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood | |
| By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air, | 25 |
| Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there, | |
| Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots | |
| Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with—down he dings | |
| His bleachèd both and woolwoven wear: | |
| Careless these in coloured wisp | 30 |
| All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks | |
| Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp | |
| Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots | |
| Fast he opens, last he offwrings | |
| Till walk the world he can with bare his feet | 35 |
| And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks | |
| Built of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks | |
| And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy quicksilvery shivès and shoots | |
| And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims, | |
| Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will the fleet | 40 |
| Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs | |
| Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about him, laughs, swims. | |
| Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean | |
| I should be wronging longer leaving it to float | |
| Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note— | 45 |
| What is … the delightful dene? | |
Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love.
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . | |
| Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends | |
| Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns | |
Rankèd round the bower
. . . . . . . . | 50 |
| |
| See Notes. |
| |
